


March

by neveralarch



Category: Matthew Swift Series - Kate Griffin
Genre: Gen, minneapolis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One stop on Penny Ngwenya's World Tour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	March

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TriffidsandCuckoos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, TriffidsandCuckoos! This was meant as a Madness fic but it just edged over the 1k mark - I hope you don't mind weird bonus fic about the American Midwest.

It was easy to be invisible in Minneapolis. You put your head down, tugged your coat tighter, pulled up your scarf, and then you were the only person left in the world. Penny wasn't sure if it was proper magic or not. She could feel everyone around her doing it, slowly winking out of sight as the temperature dropped. Even the sun was tugging clouds around itself like a blanket, growing dimmer and dimmer until you couldn't tell it had ever existed.

Penny trudged up the gently-rising arc of the bridge. The snow was smooth and pristine in front of her. When she turned to look back, she could see the snow filling in her footprints. Three or four meters back, and you couldn't tell that Penny had ever walked past.

She hadn't meant to stop here. Penny had flown into New York, wandered around for a while until she thought she understood the magic of noise and lights and crowded subways, similar and different from London in a way that made her head fizz. Then she'd rented a car to drive to LA, planning to understand America in general and then fly to Tokyo. Hooray for Matthew's expense account.

Boo for wet fucking blizzards that snowed and froze and snowed until Penny didn't trust even her amazing driving skills on the road. Penny had crawled into Minneapolis and given up for a week. The ice would clear up eventually. By March, if nothing else.

One foot in front of the other. Penny was in the middle of the bridge now, right over the Mississippi, and she stopped to feel the river tugging at her. It felt like electricity and flour and ice, and there was a trick to it. If Penny could twist her mind just right, the river would love to explode.

She kept walking. Cars whirred past on the road next to her, heaters working hard as the drivers pumped their brakes and hoped to hell that they'd work. Penny felt someone sliding as they tried to stop for a red light. The panic and annoyance echoed across the entire city, reverberating with every driver who was trying to decide whether it was safer to stop at yellow or slide through. Penny turned her head to listen and slipped on a patch of ice, falling right on her bum.

"I wasn't made for this fucking weather," grumbled Penny, and pushed herself back up.

Underneath the bridge there was an island, and when Penny made her way onto it, she could feel the city magic stop.

Or, not stop, but change. The island was a park, surrounded by the river, but the city was still there. Streetlights hummed under the deafening snow, and a out-of-service bus idled next to the bus stop sign that said 'TURN ENGINES OFF NO IDLING.' A horse-drawn carriage clopped by, wealthy and drunk passengers in the back enjoying their taste of the Victorian, but the driver was wearing a ski mask and holding a flashlight. The magic was a muddle, old and new and country and city.

Penny kept walking, over a small bridge leading away from the island and onto quiet Main Street.

It was fucking weird, honestly. Minneapolis was all chunks, distinct neighborhoods carved up by the river and the highways and the invisible boundary lines of history. When Penny walked through them it was like stepping into another country - this area was a Nordic neighborhood, ice and stoicism and passive aggression. Penny thought she could throw a curse just by thanking someone, here. Earlier she had wandered through a Somali neighborhood, felt warmth on the back of her neck, and her feet moved to the rhythm of the _kaban_. The ground was slippery-wrong under her feet but she held her head high and moved through the city like it was made for her. Earlier still she had been in a Native neighborhood, and the city seemed ghostly-strange, there and not, not old enough to feel permanent but too solid to give way without struggle. Penny still wasn't sure what would have happened if she had struggled.

There was more, too - Hmong and Black and Latino. But all American, all Minneapolis, and it blended together in the biting cold, where everyone wanted to go home, be inside, be warm and dry and fuck, was it negative 20? Again? And it would be colder tomorrow, and the car battery was dying, and the wool socks weren't cutting it anymore, have to get another pair to wear over them, and it was cold, cold cold cold cold cold-

Penny took a shuddering breath in, pulled down her scarf to breathe out and watch it freeze in the air. Negative twenty. What the hell was that in proper numbers?

She turned and started back to the hotel, fishing her mobile from the recesses of her coat as she went. She dialed, and then wedged it into her hat and her scarf and her hair until she could hear it ringing.

"Hi," said the phone. "You've reach Matthew Swift, but I'm afraid I can't come to the phone at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep. Beeeeeeep."

"I can tell it's you," said Penny. "Stop fucking about."

"Penny?" said Matthew. "Sorry, I just- Kelly's been trying to call. What gave us away?"

"You need to work on your beep," said Penny. "Listen, I'm having a lot of trouble getting hold of Minneapolis. How long does this normally take?"

"To understand a city?" Matthew hummed to himself. "How long have you got?"

"It's bloody freezing," said Penny. "I'm willing to give it another hour and then I'm out."

"We'd settle for the mystery, then," said Matthew. "And go somewhere warmer. I liked New Orleans."

"Thanks for nothing," said Penny, and hung up. Warmer did sound nice, though. Maybe it would be warmer in California.

The snow had stopped falling. Penny pulled her scarf up and her hat down until only a sliver of bare skin remained. She trained her eyes on the ground and trudged her way back into invisibility.


End file.
